Computer technology has evolved at an incredible rate, without any government intervention, just the profit motive.

Computer technology was created purely by top secret government money to crack Nazi codes and most of the development costs of later more advanced versions may have been developed by private companies but in most first instances it was paid for by governments contracts the peoples toys were just spin-offs and hand me downs a swords into ploughshares kind of thing when governments reduced spending on swords

If not for the private sector, computers would still be the size of buildings. The computer that you are using was made by a company for profit, and you are benefiting from that.

And there was me thinking that a lot of our small electronics was developed under government contracts during the cold war because NASA did not initially have the heavy lifting capacity that the Russians had, and to put better kit into space with less lift capacity they were motivated to spend lots of government research money shrinking the electronics. It constantly amazes me how current views and ideologies can slant ones perspective on even resent history

Extreme forms of capitalism and socialism both break down. Money is just a shared imaginary tool that is useful to oil all types of society some think its a zero sum game others do not and depending on how many are believing each way either or both can be true as its a big planet with lots different belief centres intersecting each other.

In absolute reality nothing has intrinsic value only shared belief gives things value and that value changes as belief changes.

_________________Someone has to tilt at windmills.So that we know what to do when the real giants come!!!!

Without Dell, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Compuserve, AOL, etc. etc. etc. Computing would not be where it is today. And that is all a result of the profit motive.

In the private sector, people have a choice as to whether or not they want to trade their resources (money) to someone else. So they only spend their money on something that is worth it to them. That leaves everyone better off. The seller receives something that he decides he needs more than what he is giving away, and the buyer receives something that he decides he needs more than what he is giving away. Everyone benefits. This works with jobs too- the worker provides his work, which he decides he needs less than his salary, and the employer gives the worker money, which he decides he needs less than the worker's work.

Government takes their resources and spends it on something that it's buerocrats decide is necessary. This takes into account neither the producer of the resources needs, nor the receiver of the resources needs. The only thing that is taken into account is what is politically favorable to the government.

When the government hires a worker for the sake of hiring the worker, it isn't worth to the person who is paying the worker's salary, the taxpayer, to get that worker's work in exchange for his salary. Otherwise, the taxpayer (or payers) would have already hired that worker by themselves. The worker is doing work that isn't benefiting the taxpayers enough for the money that they're spending on him/her.

Since the whole point of hiring the worker is to create a job - not to do something that is worth doing for the employer (the taxpayer), the government might as well just give the money to the worker for doing nothing.

Consider what would happen if the government hired the entire country. There would be 100% employment! But nothing would be produced, since the whole idea of employing those people was not to produce necessary things, but simply to hire for the sake of hiring.

_________________“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Anonymous

Some of the views being expressed in this thread are unbelievably idiotic considering we're all fans of, at the very least, the Apollo space program. Let me list some things that would 100% not exist right now in their current form if not for government funding:

You can "maybe" make a case that launch vehicles and the internet were both inevitable commercial byproducts of people playing with networking and rockets, but I think it's a huge stretch and there's no doubt that they wouldn't be as well developed.

ARPANet invented TCP and much of the modern routing technology that people don't appreciate at all.

Forgetting ICBM development's crucial role in maturing the space industry, let's not forget that the first suborbital rockets were built by the Nazis in order to kill people.

The interstate highway system was one of the largest government investments in the history of the world, and one of the best. There's plenty of analogues in Europe especially when you look at the high-speed rail system. The US cross-country rail system was also developed using government funds (though through corrupt commercial contractors).

I'm all for government taking care of transportation infrastructure. That is one of government's roles. But the US did not fund it's military in order to develop the internet: that was an unintended side effect, and it was an advance that would have happened without government funding. As to the rockets, private enterprise is showing that it can do much better than the government.It's true that government can make technological advances, but government will always do it slower, worse, and more expensively than private enterprise, because it has no motive to do otherwise. Why should a government employee worry how long, or how expensive a government project is? He doesn't make any more money one way or the other.Private enterprise has a big motive to succeed, and to succeed in the cheapest, fastest, best way possible: the profit motive. The better a business is at doing something, the more money they make. The worse they do, the less money they make, and the greater the chance the business will fail and everybody will lose their jobs.People do not work and produce things out of the goodness of their hearts. They will only produce if there is a carrot and a stick. The free market provides that, the government doesn't.

_________________“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Anonymous

Trying to answer a bunch of things in one post here, so it's a bit all over the place.

A lot (and I mean a lot, including transistors and integrated circuits but also the C programming language and the UNIX operating system) of our computer technology, hardware and software, was developed at Bell labs, the research arm of AT&T. During that time, AT&T was a for-profit company, but with US laws protecting its monopoly position. It certainly wasn't operating in a free market. Then it was broken up into smaller regional telephone companies, competition was allowed, funding for Bell labs was cut back, and today there is not much left of the whole thing, and no fundamental research is done there anymore.

Once the technology existed, it still took a long time for computers to become commonplace. IBM, then a major manufacturer of non-digital administrative equipment (punch card readers and stuff) famously envisioned a world market of five computers, really huge centralised machines for the largest of companies. It was a bunch of hobbyists in Silicon Valley that started playing with electronics, just for fun, and then a bunch of rogue engineers within IBM that created the IBM PC. Management didn't like it, but the money had been spent, so they put it out onto the market anyway, opening up the hardware specs so that anyone could build peripherals. Bill Gates persuaded them to let him write an operating system for it, and lo, there was a standard platform that anyone could write software and create hardware for. And after Compaq reverse engineered the BIOS, anyone could produce it as well. By that point, all the ingredients of what you are looking at right now were there (mouse and GUI having been invented at Stanford in the 1960's), and it was just a matter of execution. And that is something that a free market, which this well and truly was, is very very good at.

The Internet is another interesting story. The technology was funded by ARPA, the US military, with as the ultimate goal a network that would be highly redundant and able to facilitate communication even if large parts of it had been destroyed in nuclear war. It was a research project, linking universities doing government work during the 1960's. Companies like Compuserve and AOL would later develop their own, incompatible and proprietary systems using the same principles. Note that these were closed systems: others couldn't build on them, and they didn't create any market themselves. In the 1990's, the US government funded the creation of a nationwide research network, which grew into the Internet. Microsoft, at the last moment, decided to drop its plans for creating its own proprietary network protocols, and instead stole the BSD TCP/IP stack and included it into Windows 95. Compuserve and AOL withered, the Internet exploded, and now everyone finds it perfectly normal to have an online discussion between people in the US, Norway, Germany, Israel and the Netherlands. Only twenty years ago people would have put that in the new-theory-on-the-taste-of-light department.

I think that what we see here is that free markets can be very successful, but that they need some science or technology to stand on. This platform is not usually the product of a free market itself; rather it is the result of publicly funded research. AIX, HP/UX, Solaris, BSD, GNU/Linux and MacOS X are all very successful operating systems, but they stand on the shoulders of Bell Labs' UNIX (modern Windows traces its heritage to VMS and CP/M, both commercial developments). There were many small computer platforms in the 1980s, but it was the IBM PC that won, because it enabled an open market, precisely because its makers didn't think they would make much of a profit off of it. Likewise, we now see a commercial market for space flight coming into being, and it seems clear that SpaceX, operating according to free market principles, is going to wipe the floor with the cost+ contractors that don't. However, SpaceX couldn't have done that without all the technology developed by NASA over the past decades. SpaceX aren't outcompeting the others by doing research, they're doing it by excellent execution. So, free markets are a tool. They're good for getting a certain technology in the hands of everybody as cheaply as possible. They're not very good for developing new technologies or new markets, or for making sure that the sum of human effort is directed towards things that we actually benefit from as a society (rather than as individuals).

SuperShuki, you keep saying that people will only do things if they get paid for them, and that all the stuff we use is made by commercial companies. Do you get paid for contributing to this discussion? If not, why are you doing it? I think that the way you put it is a bit too simple. I'm posting this from a computer running the Arch Linux operating system (a hobby project). It comprises the Linux kernel (originally a hobby project, now developed mostly commercially, but there are still quite a few hobby contributers as well), the GNU utilities (an idealistic, non-commercial project), the X Window System (originally academic/commercial, now commercial and volunteer/hobby) and Mozilla Firefox (commercial roots, now non-profit). Quite a mixture! And there's another issue. When your ancestors were priests in a temple, most houses were probably built because their owners were cold, or hot, or wet, and needed protection from the elements. Likewise, there are still many people on this planet who live from subsistence farming. People do and make things to "scratch an itch", because they have a problem and need a solution. As the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention (and not greed). Incidentally, as far as I know the priests and their temple weren't a commercial venture either (although some of their successors in the southern US now are).

In fact, many of the newspace businesses weren't started with a primary goal of making money either. John Carmack was (and is, I hope) getting paid quite handsomely for writing game engines at Id Software. But then he decides to go and spend a pile of money on developing rockets, and he's helped by a bunch of unpaid volunteers. Sure, he's turned it into a business that is now in the black (as far as we know), but why rockets? Do they pay especially well? Is it a particularly good investment? I seem to recall him saying somewhere that he's just been playing with rockets since he was a little boy and decided that that was what he would like to do. Why did Elon Musk start an electric car company, a rocket campany, and a solar energy company? He already had all the money he could ever want from the sale of PayPal. Why do anything more? Why go and build something himself rather than invest? And why these things? Because he wanted to make a difference, to improve the world, and he decided that these three things were the best way to do so. Of course, he founded them as for-profit companies because even he couldn't afford to keep paying for them indefinitely. But the choice to do these things wasn't made based on money.

I'm not saying that all people will automatically work as much as possible on things that are useful to society without any compensation. That's a nice ideal, but ideals are rarely realistic, and this one isn't. Marx was wrong. I don't think that it's a good idea to have a system where everyone who doesn't want to work is automatically taken care of by the government. That would be unfair towards the people who do work. But humans aren't all perfectly-built superintelligent machines, we're biological entities with a large variety among ourselves. There will always be people who are (temporarily or partially) unable to work, because they have no relevant skills, are somehow limited in their capabilities, have psychological issues due to either nature or nurture, and so on. I believe that in a decent society, these people too should have a chance to participate or, if completely unable, should be taken care of. Since they will usually lose out on the job market to people who were lucky enough to not have these handicaps, the government has to step in, to help them retrain, to subsidise them so they can compete, or if all else fails to ensure that they can have a somewhat comfortable life too. After all, these things could happen to all of us.

Even if you don't care about other people other than to trade with them, there is a rational reason for the government to do this as well: to stabilise society. Crime mostly results from growing up in unstable social circumstances, on the fringes of society. So you have a choice: you can try to solve the problem, by trying to engage everyone, helping the weak and making them part of your society, thus reducing the size of the fringe, or you can try to suppress the problem: lots of police, tough sentences, little privacy, nearly 1% of your population in prisons (USA) doing at best menial jobs that don't contribute much to your economy, and so on. I submit that the former might be cheaper, and also that the latter doesn't work, as punishment doesn't deter much, and recidivism rates are typically very high.

You can have a social society without having a Marxist society, and you can have a government without having a planned economy. And if you do, life can be made just that much nicer for everyone.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

Profit doesn't have to be money. A more accurate term would be self interest. People act when they see it is in their self interest, as opposed to when someone else forces them to do something.As to the internet, I believe that it would have been born without the government. In any case, the military is not funded for the purpose of inventing things. The internet was an unintentional, unplanned result. It's planned purpose was not civilian use. Nor is the purpose of NASA to invent technology. Are you going to justify the huge amount of money that is spent on the US military on advances in technology?

_________________“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Anonymous

That's where you are wrong, or why do you think the majority of the big NASA facilities are called "research centers"?

They research things NASA needs for space, they're purpose isn't to research things that will help the general public. The things that help the general public are side effects. NASA doesn't stand for the National Association for Technology Development, and it doesn't receive a budget based on how much technology it has developed. NASA's purpose is to do space stuff (I think that actually is a pretty specific description of its purpose). The fact that, on the way, technologies that it has developed for space also have other useful applications, cannot be used as a reason for NASA's existence. It's like saying that the aviation industry should be funded by the government because it advances materials technology (which it has). In fact, you can take a look at how well industry does under government rule, by looking at how communist countries have done, and are doing. How many great technology contributions have come out of Soviet Russia, compared to the US? In fact, how many great technology contributions have come out of socialized Europe, compared to the US?

_________________“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Anonymous

You're forgetting about the enormous amount of remote sensing work NASA does. They don't just build the satellites, they also process the data and make it available as ready-made data products that are used everywhere in science and business. Their extensive climate and other environment work is derived from this. NASA is not just about aeronautics, it's about space as well and that includes our planet.

Europe contributes so much to scientific development that unlike you I can actually give some examples as arguments for my statement. The early research on light bulbs, just to name a random example, was done in Europe. Recently GE and Sandia labs have tried to create higher efficiency light bulb and failed; Philips has one on the market now though. Or compare the European auto industry to that of the US. European cars have been more fuel-efficient, clean and durable than American ones for decades. Did I mention that the history of car navigation systems is a Japanese and European one? Or for everyone who just wants to see some cool movies, have a browse around the Festo website for some German innovation. Did I mention high-speed trains (Siemens, Alstom)? Composite passenger aeroplanes (Airbus A380)? Audio cassette, CD, Blue-Ray? Almost all wafer steppers used in the semiconductor industry are made and developed in Europe. Mobile phone technology is mostly developed in Asia and Europe. And so on and so forth...

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus

You're forgetting about the enormous amount of remote sensing work NASA does. They don't just build the satellites, they also process the data and make it available as ready-made data products that are used everywhere in science and business. Their extensive climate and other environment work is derived from this. NASA is not just about aeronautics, it's about space as well and that includes our planet.

Europe contributes so much to scientific development that unlike you I can actually give some examples as arguments for my statement. The early research on light bulbs, just to name a random example, was done in Europe. Recently GE and Sandia labs have tried to create higher efficiency light bulb and failed; Philips has one on the market now though. Or compare the European auto industry to that of the US. European cars have been more fuel-efficient, clean and durable than American ones for decades. Did I mention that the history of car navigation systems is a Japanese and European one? Or for everyone who just wants to see some cool movies, have a browse around the Festo website for some German innovation. Did I mention high-speed trains (Siemens, Alstom)? Composite passenger aeroplanes (Airbus A380)? Audio cassette, CD, Blue-Ray? Almost all wafer steppers used in the semiconductor industry are made and developed in Europe. Mobile phone technology is mostly developed in Asia and Europe. And so on and so forth...

I didn't say Europe never developed any technology, but compared to the US, its contribution has been small. Lightbulbs? Thomas Edison. Auto industry? Ford. Movies? Hollywood. Airplanes? The Wright Brothers. Wafer Stoppers? The PC was born in America. Mobile phone technology? Israel.

America did not just contribute to the technological world we live in, in a large part, it created it. And it did it by enabling private individuals to have enough wealth and opportunity that they could experiment, try, and succeed and fail (the ability to fail is very important - something that government does not have). Between the European welfare state (which is in the midst of melting down, by the way) and the more free market American system, there is no comparison.

_________________“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Anonymous

This thread is already so far off topic that it can't hurt to contribute to the discussion....

Edison and light bulb? He didn't invent it, he made it a commercial success.

Movies, innovation and Hollywood? Hollywood is extremely good at making money out of movies, but innovation? I beg to differ.

Airplanes and Wright Brothers? They put a motor on a plane and therefore realized powered flight, they neither invented it (powered flight) nor the airplane.

I guess you are right on the auto industry and the PC...

If you do not stop at the surface and venture a bit deeper into the history of brilliant innovations you very often discover, that actually a lot of inventions have it's origin in Europe (of course not all), and have "only" been made commercially successful in the US. I guess we can all agree on the fact that the US economical system is much better suited for new ideas to take root, mostly because in the US it is considered OK to fail with a business (and try again), while in Europe that is not always the case (especially in Austria for example).

I think the problem in most European countries is bureaucracy, I fail to see the link to "socialism".

Beaurocracy and socialism come from the same root, the idea that government has the right to tell people what to do.

But the truth is, the European socialism that there is now is alot different than what there was when the airplane and the telephone were invented. The point is that government is no where near as good at R&D as the free market.

_________________“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.” -Anonymous

<p>No, he's not. Americans didn't invent the auto industry, Henry Ford was just the first to use a conveyer system in car production. Europeans were the first.</p>

<p>Oh, and SuperShuki, the first mobile phone call was done in US with the help of Bell Systems, before there even was an Israel to refere to. The first car phone system was launched in Sweden. If you're thinking about GSM, it was again developed by Europeans.</p>

And Japan had 3G before the US even knew what a cell phone was. Also Bollywood (the Indian film industry) is larger than Hollywood, and the Wright brothers' key contribution to human flight was the control system, which they based on the ideas of Otto Lilienthal, a German (they did invent key additions). I agree with Markus that the US is less conservative in general than Europe, possibly because it is so much younger as a nation. Nowadays however the large established players in each market are so powerful politically that I don't think that it's that easy to get in anymore. IT is perhaps an exception, as the capital costs are so low, but with the current patent wars this too is getting worse.

Looking at the 20th century, before WWII Germany was one of the most technologically advanced countries in the world. Less than a decade later the whole European (Britain somewhat excepted I guess) industrial base was reduced to rubble, and it took time for Europe to climb back out of that hole. Meanwhile the US government entered into a spending competition with the USSR government (otherwise known as the Cold War), which the Russians lost first (I dare say that the Americans have now lost as well).

Finally, the idea of having a government that can tell people what to do is as old as humanity. The difference between now and then is that it used to be simply the strongest who told the others what to do under (implicit or explicit) threat of death or other punishment. Now we have democracies that give the rest of the people a voice too, and attempt to seek compromises that everyone can live with. Of course, this only works if the government can tell the strongest what to do, but there is no other way: the alternative is anarchism and then tyranny. Socialism is an extension of that concept to human compassion, lifting it from a personal emotional issue to a general goal for society. Without socialism, or a social democracy, compassion would be disadvantageous. It shouldn't be.

_________________Say, can you feel the thunder in the air? Just like the moment ’fore it hits – then it’s everywhereWhat is this spell we’re under, do you care? The might to rise above it is now within your sphereMachinae Supremacy – Sid Icarus